My friend Arwen recently wrote on her FB status: “Last year I learned a new way of approaching the New Year – to summarize the previous year with one word, and to choose one word that summarizes your intentions for the coming year.”

This has got me thinking, of course. It’s hard to sum up an entire year! So much happened! After several dog-walks worth of contemplation, I think I’m going to sum it up with “overwhelmed”.

That’s how I felt much of the year. Byron started a plethora of after-school activities, which made me feel like I was running all the time. I suffered an intense case of burnout in the spring when I was in the home stretch with the novel. Actually finishing the novel for real was a huge thing. Starting the sequel has sometimes left me feeling at sea. Somehow, everything was too much this year.

Coming up with next year’s word was easier, because it’s a reaction to this year’s. My word for the coming year is “perspective”. With Seraphina finally coming out, Byron’s schedule unabating, the sequel ongoing, everything I felt last year has the potential to repeat and then some. I want to be able to weather those storms and not feel like I’m flailing and drowning half the time. I want  to look and think and keep things in proportion, to take my experience of “too much” and LEARN from it.

I turn 40 this coming year. There are a surprising number of good things about being this age, but one of the best is the view it affords you. You look back over everything you’ve been through and see bigger patterns, stuff that wasn’t visible when you were 25 or even 35. And that, I hope, is a tool I can use this coming year as I head into the unknown. I’ve got experience. I don’t have to be taken flat-footed every single time, and when I am, I can take a big step back and get a different angle on it.

I almost chose the word “clarity”, and that is something I want, but I think that’s incorporated into my idea of “perspective”. And, well, “perspective” was inspired by Seraphina’s North American cover, which I will be revealing soon. Once I made that connection, that was it. End of discussion. I have my word for going forward.

Last night Scott and I saw the movie “Tulpan”, very likely the best Kazakh film I’ve ever seen. The entire time, Scott kept accusing me of writing the script to the movie. I know that will make you think the movie was very verbal and witty (ha ha) but in fact, it was very quiet and slightly goofy and full of farm animals.

I loved it. Seriously. I could watch Kazakh herdsmen chase sheep all over the steppe for HOURS.

The film is about love of place, but what a bleak place it is! Flat as a pancake, dust devils like lazy tornadoes that reach all the way up to the clouds, scrubby vegetation that even the sheep aren’t quite thriving on. But to Asa, just returned from a stint in the Russian navy, it is a slice of heaven and the only place he wants to be. The trick is finding a way to stay; his brother-in-law thinks he’s useless as a herder, and the only eligible bride for miles around thinks his ears are too big.

One review we saw called it “aggressively plot-free”, and it kind of is. There are whole minutes devoted to looking at the horizon, or watching Asa help a sheep give birth, or watching his sister make dumplings. But it charms you, and not just because it’s an exotic place and existence. In fact, it works just the opposite: it charms you because you’re able to recognize something in these people, despite the unfamiliarity of their surroundings. It was the youngest child, Nuka, who got me first. He is the Platonic form of a three-year-old, prancing around on his stick-pony, unable to speak in an indoor voice, using a tortoise as a toy car. I know that kid. Hell, I raised that kid. From there, it’s a short hop to identifying with everyone: the harried and lonely wife; the husband irritated by his useless brother-in-law; the little girl singing at the top of her lungs just outside the tent because her father was sick of her singing inside; the overachieving eldest son who memorizes newscasts; daydreaming Asa.

Even Tulpan herself, who we never, ever see.

Good stuff.

Byron has learned how to open his “burp valve”.

It’s all over.

Byron had his guitar recital this past weekend. I didn’t attend – Byron chose which parent he wanted with him where, and I got karate the weekend before – but I’m told he did an excellent job. I’m not surprised. The last time he played in front of an audience, the pressure seemed to focus him.

He played “Autumn Waltz” at just the right speed. That was his biggest challenge with this piece; he wanted those waltzing couples to go flying off the dance floor in a maelstrom of music.

I’m glad Scott drew the recital straw, because he got to meet B’s teacher. I’m always the one who takes B to lessons, so Scott hadn’t met him before. They had cookies and chatted after the recital.

And I’m glad for this teacher, who has more patience than B’s previous teacher, and can even identify with B’s desire to play everything as fast as (or preferably faster than) humanly possible. They’re a good match, I think.

Byron went through grading yesterday for his Obscure Caribbean Martial Art (which we call “karate” as often as not, even though it technically isn’t), and he got his yellow belt. YAY!

It was a close thing, though, and I suspect he was actually up for yellow belt, bar one (a slightly higher rank), and was docked the bar because he choked. I mean, he really, really choked. Everything went wrong that could have. He blanked out halfway through Form One with his group, had to try it again all by himself, and then a third time, and never made it to the end. Before sparring, they asked him to get his guard (for his teeth); he fetched his card (membership). His belt fell off during sparring, and he made his sparring partner cry. During break-falls, he did a forward roll right into someone else.

But he never got upset, and he never stopped trying.

Finally, it was the very last skill, Self-Defense Techniques 1-3. The Professor (an ominous-sounding name for the not-so-ominous founder of this particular school of fighting skillz) had Byron sit on the sidelines while the other students demonstrated their skills. This was the only time I saw him close to tears, because he thought he’d already failed so bad they didn’t see the point in making him go through the final exercises. But then The Professor brought him out and put him against a really good student, more advanced than Byron, and he told Byron he wanted him to rise to the challenge.

And, totally unexpectedly at this point, Byron did.

I have to admit, I was impressed with The Professor. When he noticed Byron getting fretful, he laid a huge hand on his head and said, “Everything’s going to be all right.” When Byron started making excuses, he said, “Don’t talk with your mouth. Talk with your actions.” And Byron did it. He did some of the sharpest moves I’ve ever seen him do. He did the fastest backward rolls of his life (he reported later). He really did rise to the occasion. Everyone in the room was cheering him on.

Somehow,  in spite of everything, it was enough.

Today B only wanted me to walk him as far as the corner of 4th and Bayswater — the corner of the block we live on, that is.

It’s been a season of letting him walk further on his own. 6th Ave, right by his school, is the hardest place to cross; I did a lot of coaching there, reminders to look both ways, strategies for seeing around the parked cars. Then we added the block. Then 5th Ave. (easier because of the stop sign). Then that block as far as the alley.

So it was always just a matter of time. Still, I watched him all the way, the bright orange stripe on his backpack bobbing and weaving as he demonstrated his consummate inability to walk in a straight line. He ran, skipped, bounced around. He looked back twice: the first time he waved; the second time a bus roared between us up 4th, so I don’t know for sure.

But I bet he did.

Every day,  the question arises: how do I wedge all this stuff in?

And the answer generally seems to be: I don’t.

And here you are, wondering when I’m going to write. Alas, poor neglectorinos!

Maybe I could squeeze in a haiku every day. Shorter, but more often. That’s worth considering.

I feel like everyone else in the world does as much or more than I do, with less complaining. But maybe that’s an illusion. I rather hope so.

* Byron had a speaking part in his school’s Remembrance Day assembly last week. He was excited and really wanted me to see him perform, so I went. His class had written a collaborative poem called “Peace Is…” and each child read the line he or she had written.

* What does peace mean to Byron? “To me, peace is lying on a hill with a stalk of wheat in my mouth, watching the clouds.”

* They concluded at the end that since they all had such different ideas about what peace meant, they were going to have to work at it. That sounded about right.

* We spent the weekend in Squamish, our Xmas present from my mom and her spouse. It poured rain the entire time, and we mostly ended up staying in the (very nice) hotel room, reading.

* Honestly, it was SO NICE to have nothing to do. Deeply, deeply nice. I needed the break, apparently. I would not have said no to a longer break, in fact.

* We saw the new Three Musketeers movie. Don’t bother, unless you are, or have, an eight-year-old. Byron enjoyed it greatly.

* The problem was, they steam-punked it up. I didn’t mind that with Sherlock Holmes (Scott refused to see that one) because that’s plausible timing, but Three Musketeers is just too early for it to make a lick of sense. And can we please stop abusing Leonardo DaVinci? He was brilliant, sure, and had lots of interesting ideas and came up with lots of neat designs, but he wasn’t an engineer. He wasn’t even Archimedes. I blame the DaVinci Code for this.

* My old pal Accidental Poet asked me to re-post the URL of my other blog. It’s http://rachelhartmanbooks.com – that’s fairly straightforward. My name, plus books.

* I do spend more time over there than over here. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you all! But the number of hours each day is diminishing – have you noticed that? That’s not just me, is it? Time trickling away?

* I read a book a few years ago which explained that the days really ARE getting shorter due to a tear between the real world and Tir-na-nog. This was causing trouble on both sides, as Tir-na-nog is supposed to be timeless. People started ageing there. It was a real bad scene.

* What? I didn’t say it was a non-fiction book.

* I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year — that’s National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated. You write 50K words in a month. No, you don’t win anything, except maybe a repetitive stress injury and a whole pile of words you piled up yourself.

* It occurs to me that it should be International Novel Writing Month, given that I’m in Canada and other people aren’t. But oh well.

* So yeah, I have to write 1666 words every day to keep up the pace. I won’t, of course. I already know of a few days in the middle of the month where no writing is likely to happen, and I’m not writing extra now to get ahead due to the aforementioned predisposition to repetitive stress injuries. 1666 really is pretty much the maximum I seem to be able to do without hurting myself.

* I say, as if I hadn’t hurt myself yet. My left shoulder is already mad at me. Stupid left shoulder.

* So you know what I’ve done? I’ve decided to get exercising again. I was exercising, and then I fell off the wagon, so I’m not as fit as I could be right now. More fit = less prone to injury, I believe.

* The real effect of all this, of course, is that I do not merely have a sore shoulder anymore. I have sore everything. THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER.

I hope yours was happy! Byron was a vampire – kind of a classic, Dracula-style formal vampire. He didn’t like his fangs, though, because they made him drool. And he didn’t want any blood or even a white face, because he didn’t want to “scare the little kids”. So he was a cute vampire, due to being naturally cute. Everyone loved him; he had long conversations at many of the houses along the way. He ran from house to house, swinging his bag and spilling candy every now and then.

Last night we did the Ghost Train, and I have to say, I think it was the best one we’ve seen. The theme was “Circus of Disaster”. Why is it so easy to make clowns scary? I have no idea, and I do worry vaguely that we’ve given someone a lifelong phobia (*ahem*). B was mostly ok with it, although there was one time when Bird Boy came a bit too near the train car and he (B, not Bird Boy) ended up on Scott’s lap.

Scott’s parents were here this weekend, making all the Halloween activities extra fun! Thanks guys! Unfortunately, they weren’t able to bring us any Cardinals World Series swag. Oh well — Saturnalia!